


Before the Gods

by MartinusMiraculorum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: And the Wolves Will Come Again, Gen, Mentions of past rape/sexual abuse, The Idealization of Violence Makes for Shitty Feminism, The North remembers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7378873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MartinusMiraculorum/pseuds/MartinusMiraculorum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ramsay dies, and Sansa remembers her courtesies. </p><p>(Fix-It for GoT S6E9 'The Battle of the Bastards', because Season 5 was bullshit and Sansa deserves catharsis without becoming a flattened version of Cersei Lannister)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Gods

_I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell. And I am not afraid._

It was cold in the kennels, but she did not feel it.

Her breath frosted in the air as she looked into the darkness, where the bloodied and bound form of Ramsay Bolton (once Snow, once Lord of Winterfell) seemed to lurk.

He was their prisoner, technically.

A part of her wished that Jon had finished him in the courtyard.

 _I am a Stark. I can be brave here. This is home. This will_ always _be home. He can’t take that from me._

“Sansa,” he breathed. His face was bloodied and bruised, but even so, the hair on the back of her neck rose. In her mind’s eye, she saw him breaking free, tearing down the bars, lunging at her, throwing her to the ground…

She refused to show her fear. Not this time.

“Hello, Sansa.” He took a shaking breath. “Is this where I’ll be staying now?”

 _Was it?_ She wondered. Would it be appropriate to keep him here, with his dogs? Maybe she would kill them, one by one. They seemed to be the only things he ever cared about.

She knew what it meant that his Lord Father had not come out of Winterfell to lead the Bolton host. Ramsay might have proven himself in wholesale slaughter, but Roose Bolton was too proud to take second place to his bastard. So he was dead. And his wife too, undoubtedly. She was sad at that. Walda had been kind to her.

Just another name, another life snuffed out by this…this _monster_.

“Our time together is about to come to an end.” He sounded almost sad. It was not her he would miss, she knew. It was her _fear_. Everyone’s fear. “That’s alright.”

“You can’t kill me. I’m part of you now.”

He was right, she knew, and she hated him for it. _I will never be free of him_.

It was so, _so_ tempting to turn around and just walk out. Leave him in the darkness. Tell Jon to deal with him. But that would be to let him win. She would _never_ let him win again.

_I am a Stark, and this is Winterfell. I can be brave._

Her reply came to her in a moment of grim satisfaction. For just as he knew her greatest fears, she knew _his_.

“Your words will disappear,” she said, just above a whisper. Each word came out like a blow from Jon’s fists, striking at his pride, again and again and again. “Your _house_ will disappear. Your _name_ will disappear. All _memory of you_ will disappear.” _And House Stark will remain._ I _will remain._

As if on cue, Ramsay’s penned hounds let out a growl. She’d almost forgotten them.

Ramsay was silent. He expected her to kill him, she realized. And the worst thing, the most terrifying thing of all, was that she could. It was not anger that drove her now. It was nothing. Just a dark void where her heart used to be. _Is this what Cersei feels_ , she wondered. There was power in it, she knew, and it was _so_ alluring.

“Are you going to kill me, Sansa?” he asked. There was a disturbing note in his voice. A kind of glee. She knew that he _wanted_ her to do it, and to do it down here, in the dark.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She was barely aware of saying the words. A rushing built in her ears now. Her heart pounded in her chest.

He sensed it, she was sure. He smiled, with teeth. “You can’t do it, can you?”

She closed her eyes, and let out a breath. Then she looked him directly in the eyes. “My Lady Mother,” she said slowly, “My Lady Mother always said that I should remember my courtesies.”

She spoke over her shoulder. “Put him in irons. Bring him outside.”

She turned back as a pair of Northmen, the sigil of Bear Island embroidered on their blood-stained surcoats, moved past her. One made to open the cage.

Ramsay squinted. “What are you doing, Sansa?”

“My duty,” she said simply.

 

 

Jon met them in the courtyard, trailed by the red-bearded wildling and the smuggler turned knight. “Sansa?”

“He should die,” she said. “But he should die according to the old way. Fetch a sword.”

Jon nodded grimly, and reached for his own. She forced herself to look back at Ramsay, who was on his knees, chained hand and foot, and grinning through the pain. Always grinning.

 _Not for much longer_.

“Ser Davos,” she said, keeping her eyes on her…on the bastard of Bolton. _That is all he is. That is all he will be. I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell, and this is my home. He cannot hurt me here. Not again._ “A block.”

The Onion Knight hurried off, barking orders.

“Sansa,” Jon began.

“Yes,” she said, answering her half-brother’s unspoken question.

A small crowd had been gathered by the commotion in the yard, amongst them the small form of Lyanna Mormont. Her aspect was every bit as fierce and hard as that of her sisters Dacey and Alysanne, Sansa reflected, but perhaps it was most reminiscent of her lady mother, Maege. All three had gone south with her brother’s host, with _so_ many other bannermen and friends of her family. So few had returned, and none of the Mormont women among them.

On the fringes of the crowd she saw other wildlings, some of them women with a hard look to them, and handful of Bear Island men. Behind them, milling around uncertainly, were the Knights of the Vale and their strong garrons, the armor of men and horses alike already gathering frost. They were southern men, high into the mountains as the Eyrie might reach.

Petyr was nowhere to be seen. Curiously, neither was the Red Woman. _Good_ , she thought. They did not belong here, not as she and her bastard brother did.  

Sansa turned to watch as Ramsay was dragged forth and flung against a pig trough. Rough hands forced him to lean over it. Jon’s sword was held high, and the red-black ripples of the ancient blade shone duly against the winter sky.

But it was wrong, somehow. Something was missing.

“Hold,” she said, raising a hand. She spoke softly, yet everyone in the courtyard seemed to have freeze at her word.

“Sansa?”

She met Jon’s eyes, searching for the words. But there must have been something in her own, because abruptly he nodded.

“Mi’lady?” That was Davos.

“Bring him to the Godswood,” Jon commanded.

Her voice joined his. “He will die before the Old Gods. Let them pass their judgment.”

Ramsay looked genuinely puzzled.

“Take him,” Jon growled. Ramsay was hauled to his feet, and Sansa strode through the courtyard, tall and unafraid.

 

 

When she was small, she never did like the Godswood. Her mother had understood. She was of the south, and Sansa had her aspect. Like her mother, Sansa had worshipped the Seven, and kept her father's Gods at arm's length. They frightened her then.

Now she had true reason to fear the great tree and its bloody visage, and memories of her cursed wedding and what followed came unbidden.

Jon’s direwolf sat at the foot of the great heart tree, and his head rose, blood red eyes meeting hers. _The color of the weirwoods_ , she thought. She took courage from that gaze. _The Old Gods are with me here_.

She gestured to the foot of the tree, and stepped aside as Ramsay was dragged past. Jon followed slowly.

The Bear Island men threw their prisoner to the ground. When he tried to rise, the larger of the two pressed a foot down onto Ramsay’s shoulders, grinding his bloodied face into the earth. He got the hint soon enough.

Sansa crossed beneath the tree, hearing the rustle in its branches that Old Nan once called the whispers of the Old Gods. Her Septa had said it was nonsense, but her father had merely looked pensive.

She stood in front of Ramsay now. Gingerly, he looked up at her. And for just an instant, she saw the fear there. _Even he knows, deep down, that the Old Gods are here_. _He is a northerner. But not like me and mine._

“For the crimes of murder, treason, and…” her tongue felt thick, but she pushed on “rape, I, Sansa of House Stark…Lady of Winterfell, sentence you to die.”

Jon drew his sword with a flourish.

The wind blew through the godswood, but she did not feel the chill. _I am of the North, truly_.

Ramsay said something, but all she heard was the whispers of the Old Gods. In them she heard her father, her mother, her brothers…all the dead, looking on in this moment. Watching, watching _her_ , to see that justice was done.

And not just for her. For Rickon, for Walda, for Theon, for Kyra…even, she thought strangely, for Myranda. Even she had been a victim, in a way. _We were both trapped in his cruel game._

The sword cut through the air. Valerian steel always struck true.

She did not see the body slump, but rather watched the blood trickle over the sodden ground, sinking into it, imagined the heart tree drinking it greedily.

“Feed him to his hounds,” she said dully at the silence that followed. She had hoped that she would enjoy this moment of triumph, but all she felt was bitter relief and a bone-deep weariness. “They are very hungry, after all.”

“Sansa,” Jon began.

“Burn the Bolton banners.” She looked up at her half-brother. “Ready a force to strike at the Dreadfort. There should be a skeleton garrison at best. Ramsay always was overconfident; he will have brought all his men. The Vale Knights will be anxious for plunder; it shouldn’t be hard to convince them to go with you. Take it and burn it. Burn it all.”

She decided she had been wrong. House Bolton wouldn’t be forgotten. It would live on, but only in songs. Songs of treachery and hubris and vengeance and justice done.

And she would write them.

**Author's Note:**

> It's pretty obvious that the writers of Game of Thrones never had any idea how to write the journey of a character like Sansa, and their disturbing priorities were laid bare in the absolute illogic of the Winterfell plotline of Season 5. Still, it happened, however shittly it was framed, and the writers had a chance to at least make it worth something. Critics might disagree, but I believe they failed, and badly. There is nothing less like Sansa Stark than her actions during 'The Battle of the Bastards,' when she held back knowledge that led to the slaughter of loyal men for ??? (I genuinely don't know, I have *theories* and they are all terrible), and then executed a bound prisoner by having him eaten alive and smiled about it. If that is what is left of Sansa, then Cersei Lannister won. And frankly I'm pressed to think of a more insulting adaptation of Sansa's story, which is about compassion and empathy triumphing above cynicism and abuse.
> 
> Sansa Stark is a daughter of the North, and Ramsay's death and the fall of Winterfell should have been about her and her family securing not just vengeance (seemingly the only theme Benioff and Weiss understand) but justice. Instead, we got a contrived battle (and seriously, the logistics and politics were complete nonsense, pretty as it was to look at) where Jon, the Stark with the single least investment in this plotline, got to play the (remarkably inept) conventional hero, while Sansa did...something? That was either a naked power play, part of an Idiot Plot, or evidence she didn't care about Wildlings? Or her sole remaining family???? My righteously angry commentary keeps breaking down in the face of how little that 'twist' made any kind of sense. 
> 
> But as Sansa of all people would know, we play with the deck we're dealt. And so I have.
> 
> EDIT: Just to be clear: a) my criticism of the way Sansa acted in the episide is far more directed at the contrived and uninspired writing than the character b) Jon's idiocy (and they way he was rewarded for it) also infuriated me (I believe the words were 'I will pee on everything you love') and c) if Sansa's execution worked for you, and felt fitting for a survivor in that world, I'm not trying to take that from you. But I don't see this as a character-driven decision. I see this scene as the culmination of the loathsome 'rape as empowerment' trope that also completely disrespects Martin's Sansa (and in a darkly hillarious way Jeyne Poole, whose ordeal Martin wrote as an *explicit* repudiation of that harmful narrative). So that is why I felt the need to write this fix-it. 
> 
> For what it is worth, before I published this, I ran it past a survivor who is a big Sansa fan, to make sure I wasn't really botching this. That was really important to me. I love Martin's Sansa dearly. I don't recognize Sophie's character anymore.


End file.
